"Then we throw them away?" Ethel asked, pale, but dry-eyed. A shudderpassed through her body and she clinched her glass nervously. At thatmoment Reginald resembled a veritable Prince of Darkness, sinister andbeautiful, painted by the hand of a modern master. Then, for a space, heagain became the man of the world. Smiling and self-possessed, he filledthe glasses, took a long sip of the wine and resumed his narrative.
"That boy was followed by others. I absorbed many useless things andsome that were evil. I realised that I must direct my absorptivepropensities. This I did. I selected, selected well. And all the timethe terrible power of which I was only half conscious grew within me."
"It is indeed a terrible power," she cried; "all the more terrible forits subtlety. Had I not myself been its victim, I should not now find itpossible to believe in it."
"The invisible hand that smites in the dark is certainly more fearfulthan a visible foe. It is also more merciful. Think how much you wouldhave suffered had you been conscious of your loss."
"Still it seems even now to me that it cannot have been an utter,irreparable loss. There is no action without reaction. Even I--evenwe--must have received from you some compensation for what you havetaken away."
"In the ordinary processes of life the law of action and reaction isindeed potent. But no law is without exception. Think of radium, forinstance, with its constant and seemingly inexhaustible outflow ofenergy. It is a difficult thing to imagine, but our scientific men haveaccepted it as a fact. Why should we find it more difficult to conceiveof a tremendous and infinite absorptive element? I feel sure that itmust somewhere exist. But every phenomenon in the physical world findsits counterpart in the psychical universe. There are radium-souls thatradiate without loss of energy, but also without increase. And there aresouls, the reverse of radium, with unlimited absorptive capacities."
"Vampire-souls," she observed, with a shudder, and her face blanched.
"No," he said, "don't say that." And then he suddenly seemed to grow instature. His face was ablaze, like the face of a god.
"In every age," he replied, with solemnity, "there are giants who attainto a greatness which by natural growth no men could ever have reached.But in their youth a vision came to them, which they set out to seek.They take the stones of fancy to build them a palace in the kingdom oftruth, projecting into reality dreams, monstrous and impossible. Oftenthey fail and, tumbling from their airy heights, end a quixotic career.Some succeed. They are the chosen. Carpenter's sons they are, who havelaid down the Law of a World for milleniums to come; or simpleCorsicans, before whose eagle eye have quaked the kingdoms of the earth.But to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron and the wit ofa hundred men. And from the iron they take the strength, and from ahundred men's brains they absorb their wisdom. Divine missionaries, theyappear in all departments of life. In their hand is gathered to-day thegold of the world. Mighty potentates of peace and war, they unlock newseas and from distant continents lift the bars. Single-handed, theyaccomplish what nations dared not hope; with Titan strides they scalethe stars and succeed where millions fail. In art they live, the makersof new periods, the dreamers of new styles. They make themselves thevocal sun-glasses of God. Homer and Shakespeare, Hugo and Balzac--theyconcentrate the dispersed rays of a thousand lesser luminaries in onesinging flame that, like a giant torch, lights up humanity's path."
She gazed at him, open-mouthed. The light had gone from his visage. Hepaused, exhausted, but even then he looked the incarnation of a force noless terrible, no less grand. She grasped the immensity of hisconception, but her woman's soul rebelled at the horrible injustice tothose whose light is extinguished, as hers had been, to feed an alienflame. And then, for a moment, she saw the pale face of Ernest staringat her out of the wine.
"Cruel," she sobbed, "how cruel!"
"What matter?" he asked. "Their strength is taken from them, but thespirit of humanity, as embodied in us, triumphantly marches on."
XXI
Reginald's revelations were followed by a long silence, interrupted onlyby the officiousness of the waiter. The spell once broken, theyexchanged a number of more or less irrelevant observations. Ethel's mindreturned, again and again, to the word he had not spoken. He had saidnothing of the immediate bearing of his monstrous power upon her ownlife and that of Ernest Fielding.
At last, somewhat timidly, she approached the subject.
"You said you loved me," she remarked.
"I did."
"But why, then--"
"I could not help it."
"Did you ever make the slightest attempt?"
"In the horrible night hours I struggled against it. I even implored youto leave me."
"Ah, but I loved you!"
"You would not be warned, you would not listen. You stayed with me, andslowly, surely, the creative urge went out of your life."
"But what on earth could you find in my poor art to attract you? Whatwere my pictures to you?"
"I needed them, I needed you. It was a certain something, a rich coloureffect, perhaps. And then, under your very eyes, the colour thatvanished from your canvases reappeared in my prose. My style became moreluxurious than it had been, while you tortured your soul in the vainattempt of calling back to your brush what was irretrievably lost."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"You would have laughed in my face, and I could not have endured yourlaugh. Besides, I always hoped, until it was too late, that I might yetcheck the mysterious power within me. Soon, however, I became aware thatit was beyond my control. The unknown god, whose instrument I am, hadwisely made it stronger than me."
"But why," retorted Ethel, "was it necessary to discard me, like acast-off garment, like a wanton who has lost the power to please?"
Her frame shook with the remembered emotion of that moment, when yearsago he had politely told her that she was nothing to him.
"The law of being," Reginald replied, almost sadly, "the law of mybeing. I should have pitied you, but the eternal reproach of yoursuffering only provoked my anger. I cared less for you every day, andwhen I had absorbed all of you that my growth required, you were to meas one dead, as a stranger you were. There was between us no furthercommunity of interest; henceforth, I knew, our lives must move intotally different spheres. You remember that day when we said good-bye?"
"You mean that day when I lay before you on my knees," she correctedhim.
"That day I buried my last dream of personal happiness. I would havegladly raised you from the floor, but love was utterly gone. If I amtenderer to-day than I am wont to be, it is because you mean so much tome as the symbol of my renunciation. When I realised that I could noteven save the thing I loved from myself, I became hardened and cruel toothers. Not that I know no kindly feeling, but no qualms of consciencelay their prostrate forms across my path. There is nothing in life forme but my mission."
His face was bathed in ecstasy. The pupils were luminous, large andthreatening. He had the look of a madman or a prophet.
After a while Ethel remarked: "But you have grown into one of themaster-figures of the age. Why not be content with that? Is there nolimit to your ambition?"
Reginald smiled: "Ambition! Shakespeare stopped when he had reached hisfull growth, when he had exhausted the capacity of his contemporaries. Iam not yet ready to lay down my pen and rest."
"And will you always continue in this criminal course, a murderer ofother lives?"
He looked her calmly in the face. "I do not know."
"Are you the slave of your unknown god?"
"We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There isno freedom on the face of the earth nor above. The tiger that tears alamb is not free, I am not free, you are not free. All that happens musthappen; no word that is said is said in vain, in vain is raised nohand."
"Then," Ethel retorted, eagerly, "if I attempted to wrest your victimfrom you, I should also be the tool of your god?"
"Assuredly. But I am his chosen."
"
Can you--can you not set him free?"
"I need him--a little longer. Then he is yours."
"But can you not, if I beg you again on my knees, at least loosen hischains before he is utterly ruined?"
"It is beyond my power. If I could not rescue you, whom I loved, what inheaven or on earth can save him from his fate? Besides, he will not beutterly ruined. It is only a part of him that I absorb. In his soul arechords that I have not touched. They may vibrate one day, when he hasgathered new strength. You, too, would have spared yourself much painhad you striven to attain success in different fields--not where I hadgarnered the harvest of a lifetime. It is only a portion of his talentthat I take from him. The rest I cannot harm. Why should he bury thatremainder?"
His eyes strayed through the window to the firmament, as if to say thatwords could no more bend his indomitable will than alter the changelesscourse of the stars.
Ethel had half-forgotten the wrong she herself had suffered at hishands. He could not be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzlingmadman, whose diseased will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions.But here a young life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw Reginaldcrush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of Ernest Fielding,as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its glorious petals upona fly.
Love, all conquering love, welled up in her. She would fight for Ernestas a tiger cat fights for its young. She would place herself in the wayof the awful force that had shattered her own aspirations, and save, atany cost, the brilliant boy who did not love her.
XXII
The last rays of the late afternoon sun fell slanting through Ernest'swindow. He was lying on his couch, in a leaden, death-like slumber that,for the moment at least, was not even perturbed by the presence ofReginald Clarke.
The latter was standing at the boy's bedside, calm, unmoved as ever. Theexcitement of his conversation with Ethel had left no trace on thechiselled contour of his forehead. Smilingly fastening an orchid of anindefinable purple tint in his evening coat, radiant, buoyant with life,he looked down upon the sleeper. Then he passed his hand over Ernest'sforehead, as if to wipe off beads of sweat. At the touch of his hand theboy stirred uneasily. When it was not withdrawn his countenance twitchedin pain. He moaned as men moan under the influence of some anaesthetic,without possessing the power to break through the narrow partition thatseparates them from death on the one side and from consciousness on theother. At last a sigh struggled to his seemingly paralysed lips, thenanother. Finally the babbling became articulate.
"For God's sake," he cried, in his sleep, "take that hand away!"
And all at once the benignant smile on Reginald's features was changedto a look of savage fierceness. He no longer resembled the man ofculture, but a disappointed, snarling beast of prey. He took his handfrom Ernest's forehead and retired cautiously through the half-opendoor.
Hardly had he disappeared when Ernest awoke. For a moment he lookedaround, like a hunted animal, then sighed with relief and buried hishead in his hand. At that moment a knock at the door was heard, andReginald re-entered, calm as before.
"I declare," he exclaimed, "you have certainly been sleeping the sleepof the just."
"It isn't laziness," Ernest replied, looking up rather pleased at theinterruption. "But I've a splitting headache."
"Perhaps those naps are not good for your health."
"Probably. But of late I have frequently found it necessary to exactfrom the day-hours the sleep which the night refuses me. I suppose it isall due to indigestion, as you have suggested. The stomach is the sourceof all evil."
"It is also the source of all good. The Greeks made it the seat of thesoul. I have always claimed that the most important item in a greatpoet's biography is an exact reproduction of his menu."
"True, a man who eats a heavy beefsteak for breakfast in the morning isincapable of writing a sonnet in the afternoon."
"Yes," Reginald added, "we are what we eat and what our forefathers haveeaten before us. I ascribe the staleness of American poetry to thegriddle-cakes of our Puritan ancestors. I am sorry we cannot go deeperinto the subject at present. But I have an invitation to dinner where Ishall study, experimentally, the influence of French sauces on myversification."
"Good-bye."
"Au revoir." And, with a wave of the hand, Reginald left the room.
When the door had closed behind him, Ernest's thoughts took a moreserious turn. The tone of light bantering in which the precedingconversation had taken place had been assumed on his part. For the lastfew weeks evil dreams had tortured his sleep and cast their shadow uponhis waking hours. They had ever increased in reality, in intensity andin hideousness. Even now he could see the long, tapering fingers thatevery night were groping in the windings of his brain. It was awell-formed, manicured hand that seemed to reach under his skull,carefully feeling its way through the myriad convolutions where thoughtresides.
And, oh, the agony of it all! A human mind is not a thing of stone, butalive, horribly alive to pain. What was it those fingers sought, whatmysterious treasures, what jewels hidden in the under-layer of hisconsciousness? His brain was like a human gold-mine, quaking under theblow of the pick and the tread of the miner. The miner! Ah, the miner!Ceaselessly, thoroughly, relentlessly, he opened vein after vein andwrested untold riches from the quivering ground; but each vein was alive vein and each nugget of gold a thought!
No wonder the boy was a nervous wreck. Whenever a tremulous nascent ideawas formulating itself, the dream-hand clutched it and took it away,brutally severing the fine threads that bind thought to thought. Andwhen the morning came, how his head ached! It was not an acute pain, butdull, heavy, incessant.
These sensations, Ernest frequently told himself, were morbid fancies.But then, the monomaniac who imagines that his arms have been mangled orcut from his body, might as well be without arms. Mind can annihilateobstacles. It can also create them. Psychology was no unfamiliar groundto Ernest, and it was not difficult for him to seek in some casualsuggestion an explanation for his delusion, the fixed notion thathaunted him day and night. But he also realized that to explain aphenomenon is not to explain it away. The man who analyses his emotionscannot wholly escape them, and the shadow of fear--primal, inexplicablefear--may darken at moments of weakness the life of the subtlestpsychologist and the clearest thinker.
He had never spoken to Reginald of his terrible nightmares. Coming onthe heel of the fancy that he, Ernest, had written "The Princess Withthe Yellow Veil," a fancy that, by the way, had again possessed him oflate, this new delusion would certainly arouse suspicion as to hissanity in Reginald's mind. He would probably send him to a sanitarium;he certainly would not keep him in the house. Beneficence itself in allother things, his host was not to be trifled with in any matter thatinterfered with his work. He would act swiftly and without mercy.
For the first time in many days Ernest thought of Abel Felton. Poor boy!What had become of him after he had been turned from the house? He wouldnot wait for any one to tell him to pack his bundle. But then, that wasimpossible; Reginald was fond of him.
Suddenly Ernest's meditations were interrupted by a noise at the outerdoor. A key was turned in the lock. It must be he--but why so soon? Whatcould have brought him back at this hour? He opened the door and wentout into the hall to see what had happened. The figure that he beheldwas certainly not the person expected, but a woman, from whose shouldersa theatre-cloak fell in graceful folds,--probably a visitor forReginald. Ernest was about to withdraw discreetly, when the electriclight that was burning in the hallway fell upon her face and illuminedit.
Then indeed surprise overcame him. "Ethel," he cried, "is it you?"
XXIII
Ernest conducted Ethel Brandenbourg to his room and helped her to removeher cloak.
While he was placing the garment upon the back of a chair, she slipped alittle key into her hand-bag. He looked at her with a question in hiseyes.
"Yes," she replied, "I kept the key; but I had not dreamed
that I wouldever again cross this threshold."
Meanwhile it had grown quite dark. The reflection of the street lanternswithout dimly lit the room, and through the twilight fantastic shadowsseemed to dance.
The perfume of her hair pervaded the room and filled the boy's heartwith romance. Tenderness long suppressed called with a thousand voices.The hour, the strangeness and unexpectedness of her visit, perhaps evena boy's pardonable vanity, roused passion from its slumbers and onceagain wrought in Ernest's soul the miracle of love. His arm encircledher neck and his lips stammered blind, sweet, crazy and caressingthings.
"Turn on the light," she pleaded.
"You were not always so cruel."
"No matter, I have not come to speak of love."
"Why, then, have you come?"
Ernest felt a little awkward, disappointed, as he uttered these words.
The House of the Vampire Page 6
